Friends,

I've just published the following paper online at SSRN:

Abstract:       

In October 1791, Sabine Hall scion George Carter (1762-1802), so inebriated and exhausted from “three days & three whole nights” of play that he could barely hold up his cards — or his head — lost £1,893 to John Cooper in a final late-night round of the game Twenty-One at Benson’s Tavern in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Though Virginia newspapers discretely omitted mention of Carter’s shocking loss (out of respect for his powerful, elite family), tongues wagged with the sordid story in Fredericksburg and beyond, and the question of how to deal with Cooper’s demand for payment presented a profound crisis of family honor for the Carters. This paper will examine the culture of gaming in eighteenth-century Virginia and the clash between family honor, as it was understood by Virginia's elite at the time, and the law. It will illustrate how at least one family would sooner render themselves insolvent than breach their notion of family honor.

Available (for free) at:

Katheder, Thomas, Debt of Honor: A Sabine Hall Gamester Comes to Ruin in Fredericksburg (October 6, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2506179 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2506179 

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